


lights in the tunnel

by shellsinsand



Series: the consequences of light [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 19:18:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15735738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellsinsand/pseuds/shellsinsand
Summary: the war changes things, even when they're trying to distract themselves from it





	lights in the tunnel

**Author's Note:**

> Technically this is part of a larger everyone lives/fix it AU that I'm writing - but it could also be read as canon compliant. Set somewhere during the third shinobi war.

The bed dips under him, dragging him from the deep cocoon of sleep, and the warm weight of Kushina on his back follows. She smells like sake and weapon oil and plum, her hair spilling over his cheek. He has a dream, sometimes, where they are nothing more than this: farmers or fishermen who end every night wrapped in each other’s arms. It used to make him laugh. Now, it sits in his chest like a burning coal. He doesn’t want it per say – he’s well aware civilians are barely faring better than the ninjas in this conflict – so much as he is so tired of walking in a world shadowed so firmly in death, in distrust. 

“Stop thinking,” Kushina says into the back of his neck. “It makes you maudlin.” 

“You’ve been with Mikoto,” he mumbles, keeping her hair out of his mouth with the skill of long practice. Kushina doesn’t mellow out for many people, especially while drinking, but her best friend is one of them. She giggles and rolls onto the mattress, keeping her leg slung over his low back. He stretches, briefly shoving his face into his pillow, before prying his eyes open to look at her. 

Minato’s been in love with Kushina for nearly ten years – sometime because of his better judgement and sometimes in spite of it. The sight of her, cheeks flushed and a smudge of oil on her nose, still takes his breath away. If they make it through this war he’s going to marry her the second she lets him. She grins at him, bright eyed and mischievous, like the universe had called out the punch line of the joke just to her. It sparks something down his spine. 

“Don’t be jealous,” she says, tracing a finger along his jaw. “We decided against running away together in the end.” 

“I’m not,” he says, shifting until he can prop himself up. She rolls onto her back, loose with alcohol, and pulls at him until he settles over her. They fit together with the grace of seven years practice. He wants to say that she deserves the world, that he’s so painfully glad she has someone to hold her hand should the worst happen, but she’d only hit him. Kushina’s not one for what-ifs, and she’s lived too much tragedy to let it into her bed. He presses his forehead against the hollow of her collar bones instead. “You’d miss me,” he says, and that’s enough for him. She threads one hand through his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp, and he melts into the touch, the warmth of her skin through her shirt. 

“I’d miss your hair,” she says, eventually, bringing her other hand up to trace over his back. There’s a scar running diagonally across his shoulder blade that her hands always seem to find, fingertips resting in the groove of it. She says it makes him feel more real. “Your shoulders as well - that sleeveless phase you had almost caused a riot at the market.”

“You started that,” he says. She’d managed to rip both of his sleeves during one of their sparring matches and it’d seemed easier to just cut them off than try to fix them. The summer had been a hot one – it’d only made sense to continue the trend. She laughs, low, and he shivers a little bit under the finger she runs down his spine. It’s slow, dipping into the valleys between each vertebra until it hits the waist of his boxers. She splays her hand out there and the heat of her palm feels like a brand when she rocks her hips up to meet his. He can feel the heat of a blush creeping up his neck, and he tries to pick his head up – to look at her, to kiss her, to do something – but she pushes him back down and tugs at his hair in retaliation. 

“I finished it.” She’s… not wrong. Minato’s never been unhappy with their sex life, but every once in a while Kushina gets it in her head that they can Do Better, and then it’s all he can do to keep up. “Mmm… I’d miss your birthmark.” She runs her heel up the back of his leg until she hits his butt; he whines a little in the back of his throat. “Oh, I would definitely miss your ass.” 

“Kushina,” he says, and it comes out more broken than he intended. Like always, she’s under his skin faster than he knows how to deal with, and he just wants her in any way she’ll let him have her. She laughs, but finally (finally) lets up the pressure on the back of his head. He blinks into the light of their bedroom, and looks up at her. The green of her eyes is barely visible and she bites her cheek as she runs her thumb over his lower lip. 

“Yes,” she says, “I’d miss you.” He kisses her then, because he can’t not anymore. She softens against him, winding one hand around his neck and sliding the other down the back of his boxers, and seems content to go where he takes them. He pulls back, ghosting kisses along her jaw until he can bite at the hinge of it. 

“Just starting trouble?” he says, gasping a little as Kushina drags a thumb over the sensitive spot on his neck. 

“Letting you show -,” her fingers twitch against his neck as he licks over the bite mark; he grins against her pulse point. “Show me what I’d miss.” Oh, so that’s how this is going to be. He lifts his head to kiss her properly again, deliberately keeping it shallow, and shifts his weight to his elbows until they’re just barely touching. She holds out for two minutes of short sipping kisses and the superheated layer of air between them before she growls. He stops her before she can flip them – forcing her thighs wide and pinning her wrist against the mattress. 

“Thought this was my show,” he says, and the impatient flush on her cheeks is a sight to behold. Her fingernails scrape over the thin skin between his ass and thigh and the rest of his breath flees in a gasp. 

“Orgasms, Namikaze, there better be orgasms.” He grins and rocks his hips against hers, catching her groan against his lips. The part of him that is always caught up in the hiraishin goes quiet under her hands – a hundred different pinpricks of space-time silenced. It’s a bit like stepping out of a haze; he’s going to eat her out until she begs. He retreats, sitting back on his heels and pulling her up with him. 

“All you had to do was ask,” he says, grinning, and tugs her shirt up before she can hit him. She’s not wearing a bra and the sight of her, smooth skin and freckles, goes straight to his dick. 

There had been a night years and years ago, before Kushina and him had been doing anything more than flirting with the orbit that would put them here, where he’d happened to arrive at the party almost at the same time as Kushina. They’d been early, Mikoto the only other one there, and she’d taken one look at Kushina and pulled a face. You’re so lucky, she’d said, flicking the bare skin over her spine. It had taken him a moment to realize it’s the spot where her bra should have been. He’d like to say that knowledge hadn’t preoccupied the better part of his late teens, but Minato lied for a living; he didn’t like to bring the tendency home with him. 

Kushina’s elbow knocking against his shoulder brings him back to the present and his hands settle on her hips without any conscious direction. “Focus, babe,” she says, amused, tossing her shirt to the floor. She reaches up to push her hair back and he takes the opportunity to cup one of her breasts, teasing her nipple with his thumb just to watch the way her composure cracks and her mouth falls open in a sigh. He uses his other hand to drag her up into his lap and feels her legs wrap around his waist and her hands find their way to his hair as he kisses his way up her neck. She’s everywhere – her skin and her warmth and her smell – languid and trusting and so beautiful it hurts. It’s overwhelming suddenly. Her head’s tilted back, eyes closed, and her smile is lazy with contentment. She doesn’t get like this often, but the breadth of their past makes it easy to know what to do when she does. The banter dries up in his throat, however, and his earlier plans slide from his head. He wraps both his arms around her instead and buries his face in her neck like a child, breathing shakily against the thrum of her pulse. 

Sensei always said love was a great and terrible thing – and it’s taken a war to teach Minato the truth of it. Trusting anyone this much is a dangerous line of thought for a ninja, but he does. Kami he does, and seeing it mirrored back at him always walks the line of too much. 

She hums, pressing a kiss to his hair. “Always thinking.” One of her hands stays firm at his neck like an anchor, but the other moves over his back, soothing. She wiggles, just a little, to crack her ankle and he hisses through his teeth as his body reminds him it’s still very invested in the proceedings. His face feels like it’s about to catch fire. “Look at me,” she says suddenly, insistent. He swallows his pride, and does. “You stupid man,” she says, cupping his chin in her palm, but her face is soft. She leans in until they’re sharing air, noses brushing. “If you wanted to have mushy feelings sex, you could have just said,” she whispers, and it startles a laugh out of him. “I’ll stare deeply into your eyes and everything.” He knocks their foreheads together to get her to stop before she can say anything more mortifying. She laughs, but doesn’t protest when he kisses her quiet. 

“I was supposed to be proving a point,” he mutters eventually, when they’ve tipped back horizontal and she’s sprawled out underneath him. 

“You loving me was the point,” she says, gasping, as he mouths at the soft skin under her breast. He scrapes over her nipple with his teeth, but sets his chin on her sternum to let her catch her breath. This view – her hair a mess against his pillowcase, her teeth sunk into her lower lip, every part of her curling towards him – is never going to get old. 

“I do love you,” he says, reflexive, before pouting up at her. “You don’t like feelings sex.” Feelings cuddling? Sure. Feelings hugs? Definitely. But Kushina, as a rule, tended to roll her eyes at mid-coitus declarations of love. She squints down at him.

“I like you,” she says in a tone of voice that implies he really should know better by now. He probably should. She smiles, as soft as Kushina ever gets. “All you had to do was ask.” He bites her for that, sucking a bruise into the thin skin between her breasts. Generally Kushina is the biter, but here, now, it makes her hands dig into his shoulders in a way that’s extremely gratifying. He moves back up to kiss her slowly, taking his time, and she lets him set the pace for all she turns it filthy as quickly as possible. Either way, it distracts her long enough for him to get his hand down her pants, his fingers just barely brushing over her clit. She’s so wet already and she turns her head aside as her hips jerk up, fingers spasming on his back. 

“You’re beautiful,” he says, pressing his nose to her cheek. “Here,” he says, kissing his favorite freckle on her jaw and then the tip of her nose. “Here.” The curve of her smile demands to be loved, so her kisses her there too, and then her cheekbone and the almost invisible scar that disappears into her hairline. “Here.”

“You’re ridiculous,” she says, but it’s so fond she might as well have tattooed a heart against his chest. He tsks at her anyway. 

“Here,” he says, and sinks two fingers into her fast, finally giving her some pressure on her clit. 

“Fuuuuuuck,” she says, rolling up into it. The angle’s not great for his wrist so he rolls onto his side, hooking his chin on her shoulder. It lets him get in deeper and watch the way the tremors run through her abs when he curls his fingers up. 

“All I could think earlier was that I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it all,” he says, and feels her tighten around his fingers, her breath coming in gasps. “Like this?” She shakes her head and presses a hand to his cock. The fabric of his boxers is damp and faintly sticky and he’d mostly forgotten he was still wearing them. He breathes through the dizzy rush of bodily awareness – the thick thrum of now now now as she swipes her thumb over the head of his dick. 

“Show me,” she says, snapping the waistband against his hip. “Wanna feel you.” He groans into her shoulder, and reclaims his hand so he can shove his boxers down his hips. She follows him over, out of her underwear faster than he can blink, straddling his hips and sinking down on his cock. He’s pretty sure his boxers are still hanging on to one of his ankles; it promptly ceases to matter. The world narrows to the press of her palms against his chest, the rhythm she sets with her hips – slow and inevitable. He gets his feet planted so he can move in counterpoint to her and it takes almost no time at all to find himself on the edge. 

“Kushina,” he says, half a warning, half a promise. She leans down to kiss him, sloppy, and he can feel the back of her knuckles against his pelvic bone, the fluttering of her muscles when her fingers find her clit. Their lips break apart but he stops her before she can lean back. Her pupils are blown, a bead of sweat trails past his thumb when he cups her face, and strands of her hair are stuck to his shoulders. Red threads of fate. He’s the first to look away, pressing their foreheads together. “I love you,” he says, getting his hand on her ass so he can force them into a slow grind. “Your humor and your stubbornness and the – fuck – the way you are incapable of finishing a pot of tea. I – ah – I’d chose you every time.” One of her hands is in his hair again, tiny spots of pain that get swept up in the tide of pleasure. “I’m yours,” he says, and her breath hisses against his cheek as she goes tight around him. She pulls back just far enough to look at him and her eyes are bright. 

“Not fair,” she whispers, then, “Kiss me.” He does, and when he tips over the edge a moment later she follows him down, biting his bottom lip. He drifts out of the orgasm haze slowly, warm and poking idly at the rawness of his emotions. Kushina’s a solid weight on his chest, doing a better impression of a pile of goo than a person; a job well done. He winds a strand of her hair around his finger. She’s such a force of nature – a daughter of the ocean through and through – that he forgets, sometimes, that she’s following him just as much as he’s following her. He frowns. Maybe this is just one more part of him the war has touched, made him more likely to cling to the past than find his footing in the present… Suddenly, there’s a sharp pain right over his heart. 

“Fuck,” he yelps, and glares balefully down at the top of Kushina’s head.

“I just fixed you,” she says, and he can feel the rumble of the words against his skin. “Don’t ruin it by thinking.” He laughs a little and lets his head drop back against the pillows. But it’s too late; the buzzing’s back under his skin. There’s a whole stack of paperwork he needs to finish, and Kakashi needs looking in on – hell his whole team does. He needs to find someone to check in on them when he’s inevitably sent back to the front lines. Kushina sighs a minute later, and levers herself up to face him. 

“I did say orgasmssssss,” she says, obnoxiously drawing out the plural. “You know, if you need something to do.” She grins though, to take the sting out of it. He finds his hands at her hips again before his mind’s caught up. 

“I was going to eat you out earlier,” he says, slowly.

“Yeah,” she says, voice catching when he licks his lips. “You should get on that.” 

“It’s been a long time.” His mouth waters a little just at the thought. Minato can count number of times in the last two years that they’ve been in the same place for more than a day with neither one of them injured (let alone clean) on just his fingers. 

“Practice,” she sing-songs, nipping at the edge of his jaw. It’s the kind of thing she’d do when they were still kids, both of them fumbling but Minato infinitely more embarrassed by it. He smiles and rolls them over, kissing her quick and dirty. 

There’s a part of him that’s aware that this is only temporary, that tomorrow’s more likely to bring darkness than light. The rest of him is stuck on the time his genin team had been tasked with escorting a merchant through the mountains to Grass country. They’d spent three days walking through the cave system that served as winter passage and the whole trail was lit with lanterns. The lights had been mostly plain, utilitarian but every tenth one or so has been delicately crafted – as beautiful as it was fragile. Nothing more important than lights in a tunnel, the merchant had said, you have to remember daylight exists. 

He had thought it was ridiculous at the time, plain lanterns provided just as much light as fancy ones did. Now, Kushina spread out beneath him, laughs melting into moans and back again, it’s still ridiculous – but the kind of ridiculous that makes life worth living. Later, when their sheets are so filthy that they go to sleep on the couch, she’ll curl herself around him and tuck her hand against his heart. 

“I love you too,” she’ll say, and the sleep that steals over him won’t seem dark at all.


End file.
